


Manners of Death

by methylviolet10b



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Gen, Injury, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-27
Updated: 2012-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-30 05:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/328155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson's had a lot of reasons to consider how he might happen to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Manners of Death

**Author's Note:**

> This is a January promptfill fic for Morgan_Stuart, who prompted: "There was just impenetrable blackness, and two men sitting together in the cold darkness, leaning against each other as much as the wall, listening to their own shallow, rasping breathing as the air grew increasingly foul."
> 
> Warnings: If descriptions of various forms of death, injury, war, mud, blood, and trench warfare disturb you, you might want to skip this fic.

This was not how I had imagined I would die. 

Perhaps other men do not spend much time contemplating the possible manners of their demise. But I am a doctor. I have seen every manner of death over the course of my career, and such reflection is a natural consequence.

These kinds of thoughts are doubly natural when one has been a soldier in Her Majesty’s – now His Majesty’s – service.I have served in two wars now. One when I was a young man in Afghanistan, where I saw most of my fellows cut down and nearly died myself. I came home from that conflict with permanent reminders carved into my body and soul, deemed unfit for further military service. Unfit until now, when the entire world has plunged into war, and my country can no longer deny my utility as a doctor and veteran despite my old injuries and advanced age. Being a soldier causes a man to reflect on his own mortality just as much as the practice of medicine.

And a man is triply likely to have contemplated the various possibilities of his own death when he has spent seventeen years at the side of Sherlock Holmes, facing every kind of danger in the pursuit of justice. Before Holmes retired in 1903, he and I had faced poisoners, stranglers, assassins, and criminal masterminds, as well as every variety of common thugs, desperate culprits, and armed persons with little left to lose. I had been attacked, battered, choked, knocked unconscious, knifed, drugged, poisoned, and shot over the course of Holmes’ cases.So contemplating the distant – and not-so-distant – prospect of my demise was nothing new to me.

For all that, I never once imagined this particular death. 

My life had grown quite quiet since Holmes’ retirement. My medical practice was routine, my encounters with criminal elements practically nil, and reminders of mortality, while never entirely absent, faded into the background along with my adventuresome past. The closest I came to danger was when I picked up my pen to recount past cases, or when I braved the hazards of Holmes’ Sussex cottage and his ever-active beehives. For several years even that hazard receded, as I lost almost all contact with Holmes himself. A necessity of the role he was asked to play by his country, just as my own medical practice had been set aside when England plunged into the war that not even Holmes’ brilliant, years-long endeavors could prevent.

When I returned to war, I knew it was entirely possible that another bullet would find me – and that I might not survive the experience. Or I might be torn asunder by cannon-fire, or blown to bits, or fall victim to any of the other horrors of the battlefield I could imagine. I knew myself likely safe from the terrible knives of the Afghani, but everything else I had seen – yes, that could happen to me.

Holmes knew it, too. He did not say so directly, but I saw it in his eyes, felt it in the faint trembling of his hands when he took mine in his own. Heard it in his voice and in the words that he did _not_ say when he wished me luck and asked me to take every care that I could. He requested my presence at his hearth-side as soon as I returned to England, to hear my adventures from my own lips.

He did not say anything about my being home before Christmas, as so many others blithely assumed. He knew better, and by extension, so did I. But even with that warning, I could never have imagined the horrors of _this_ war, the poison gas, the barbed wire, the hopeless mire of mud and blood and despair.

The trenches and the tunnels, where we lived more like rats than men. The endless maze of them, where so many found death instead of shelter. Myself now included.

“Doctor?”

I left off my banging and reached out in the pitch-blackness. Although I could not see a thing, I swiftly found his shoulder. Sergeant Davies, he’d said his name was. I found his hand and felt it desperately grasp my own. “How are you doing, Sergeant?”

“I’m holding my own, but I’d be a dashed sight better for a little water.”

I carefully gave him a mouthful from my canteen. It was little enough, but all I could do. “Any more pain from your legs?” The Sergeant’s entire lower right leg had been buried in the tunnel collapse, and his left foot was likely broken. I had tried to free him, but without light or tools – and with the realities of my own injuries – it was a hopeless effort, and as likely to hasten his death as help him. I had been able to maneuver him into a relatively comfortable sitting position, but that was all.

“No, sir. They hurt, but no worse than before.” I heard him swallow, sensed his agony and his barely-leashed terror as if he’d shouted them aloud. “Any sign of diggers?”

“Not yet, but never you fret, Sergeant. I’m sure they’re working for all they’re worth. They’ll have us out as soon as they can.” If anyone was left alive in this section. If anyone knew to look. I had no idea how close the bomb had fallen, how much of the trench system had collapsed. For all I knew, there wasn’t a man left alive between Major Wimsey’s command-post and the rear. And if there were any left living, they were likely buried alive just the same as we. I felt the darkness and walls pressing in on me, but ruthlessly suppressed my own feelings. “In the meantime, I’ll keep tapping out a signal, just to let the boys know we’re still here.” A signal to which I hadn’t heard a single response, but Sergeant Davies hadn’t asked, and I wasn’t about to tell him. “I wouldn’t want them to worry.”

“Well, a little worry won’t hurt, if it makes them dig faster.” Gallows humor, gasped out between pained breaths, but I chuckled appreciatively all the same. 

It wasn’t the worst death I had imagined, not by a long stretch. It hurt, yes, but I had suffered far worse, seen far worse. There was no pain from a bullet, no horrible visions from poisonous smoke or rampaging fever, no choking out of life in a cloud of hideous yellow gas. There was just impenetrable blackness, and two men sitting together in the cold darkness, leaning against each other as much as the wall, listening to their own shallow, rasping breathing as the air grew increasingly foul.

We were already buried. Now all we had left to do was to die. 

But until then, I would keep tapping out my SOS. I had promised Holmes that I would do everything I could to return, and I would not break my word of honor to him, not even here at the end.

Time passed; how much so, I could not say. My chest started to ache, and my head. I felt myself growing increasingly sleepy, felt my revolver grow intolerably heavy in my hand. I tried to keep banging out the distress message, but eventually it grew too much to manage. I set my revolver down next to me with a sigh. Dimly, I could hear Davies’ gasping, sobbing breaths, but mostly all sound was drowned out by the ringing in my ears, the dull thunder of my own heartbeat.

“Watson!”

It was impossible, of course. A hallucination, a desperate attempt from my oxygen-starved brain to conjure up comfort, a dying organ’s last effort to dream of rescue. But I heard it all the same. Holmes’ voice, high and commanding, with the same underlying note of desperation I’d heard only a few times before, most notably in the Garrideb case. Unlike then, there was no comfort I could offer in return, no shrugging off of injury, no miraculous sidestepping of death. 

I desperately wished it was otherwise. I wanted nothing more than to return to England, to Holmes. To not leave him behind.

“Watson!”

There was the call again, even more urgent than the last. How very like Holmes, imperiously summoning a dying man with no regard at all for the circumstances or for anything other than his own convenience. How typical of him to shout for me, knowing that I would answer, no matter how unreasonable he was being. Couldn’t a man die in peace?

“Watson!”

Apparently not. I should have known Holmes would prove more stubborn than death itself.

Burning liquid forced its way past my lips and down my throat. Brandy. I choked, coughed – and opened my eyes. Light met them, blinding after all the darkness, and I swiftly scrunched them closed. “What is it? A fire?” I gasped out, mortally confused.

“Doctor Watson, thank God!” A gritty palm patted my face, not quite a slap. Other hands seized my shoulders, dragging me partially upright – when had I laid down? Where was I? Memories of abrupt summonings and moonlit chases mingled with echoes of prior shocks, leaving me adrift in time and place.

Another voice spoke. “Come on, sir, breathe for us. Take nice deep breaths. We’ve got you.”

“Holmes?” I scarcely recognized the rasping croak I produced as my own voice. Memory stirred, and I forced my eyes open again.

“No, sir, but from what you’ve told me and what you’ve read aloud of his letters, Mr. Holmes would make my life a pure misery if I let you die on my watch.” My blurry eyes focused on the face hovering near my own. Bates, my faithful orderly, nearly covered with mud from head to toe, hands scratched and bleeding, concern and relief warring across his features.

“Cor, that’s the truth, and no mistake. My life’d not be worth a clipped shilling, neither.” Another face crowded next to Bates, one even more streaked with filth and grime, but grinning from ear to ear. “It’s a long way from Baker Street, isn’t it, sir?”

The features were greatly changed, but the grin was the same. “Billy? Good heavens, is that you?” Just the effort of speaking those few words left me exhausted. Everything hurt.

“Yes, Doctor Watson – or I s’pose I should say, um, Captain? Major?” He shook his head. “Afraid your uniform’s too much a mess to tell your proper rank, sir, but whatever it is, it can’t be half your worth.” He turned to Bates, still beaming, and I saw two clean tracks of skin down his cheeks. “Dunno if he’s ever told you, but this man and Mr. Holmes – well, they saved a lot of lives, including mine. Just pure luck that I was here today to help return a little of the favor.”

I stared at the muddy hole nearby, where other men were struggling to bring out Davies. A dank gap barely wide enough to admit a crawling man, and a death-trap if the mortars found us again. A grave, but not my grave, not today. I wanted to speak, but could not. Instead I used what little strength I had left to squeeze Billy’s arm in appreciation and thanks, and to nod at Bates. I hoped they understood everything I could not say.

From Billy’s smiles and Bates’ gentle murmurings as they lifted me onto a stretcher, I think they did.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted January 26, 2012


End file.
